John Pienaar will be the guest speaker and host for the 2017 Cambridge News & Cambridge Business magazine Business Excellence Awards in the Great Hall at King’s College on Thursday, March 23.

The BBC’s deputy political editor and presenter of the weekly Westminster round-up Pienaar’s Politics on Radio 5Live, he is a seasoned reporter who sees his job as beating a path through the forest of Government spin.

Ever since his original, often controversial parliamentary sketch for the Independent, he has acted as tour guide and translator of goingson in the Westminster village.

John originally trained at South London Press, covering whatever was occurring on his

doorstep – be it street crime, domestic violence, sex, drugs or rock’n’roll. He then became an

Old Bailey correspondent and even wrote an angling column (without ever having held a

fishing rod).

Instantly recognisable to television news audiences, John has spent hundreds of hours standing

in the rain outside 10 Downing Street. He was also invited to take part in a celebrity boxing

show, only for it to be cancelled for fear that someone might get hurt.